Half of what was Whole
by kittiestrophe
Summary: [Set after Deathly Hallows] Like ears, they had always been a pair, and somehow George knew they always would be.


Nobody had ever known The Burrow to be as quiet as it was in the days that followed the news of Voldemort's defeat.

From where he sat on the floor, slumped against the wall in the living room, all George Weasley could hear was the furious scrubbing of pots and pans from the kitchen. Molly had taken to doing the washing up by hand several times a day, scrubbing so hard that endless plates and glasses had become victim to her actions. She hadn't touched her wand since that day. The day he had died.

A strange feeling hung over the house like a dark cloud; the family, Fleur, Harry and Hermione had all gathered at The Burrow, but George didn't really see the point. All it did was make the dark cloud bigger, heavier, and no matter how much misery it rained on them, it wasn't going to bring him back.

The first few days, George had stayed in his room. Curled up on the floor amidst towers of boxes stuffed with Skiving Snackboxes and Nosebleed Nougats, he had cut himself off from everybody else, eyes staring straight ahead at the window, as though a face would pop up at any moment, still bearing the traces of the last laugh it had held and chuckling that he had made them all believe he was dead.

But no-one came, and the emptiness continued. Occasionally, George would press his fingers to the side of his head; the absence of his ear had yet to bother him, but as his fingertips traced the edges of the wound, he could hear a voice. A voice much like his own, but someone else, laughing, joking. Sometimes, the voice would begin a sentence, and George would find his lips moving of their own accord, his own voice finishing the rest of the sentence aloud.

In the dimly lit room, these half sentences made no sense.

In that room, nothing made sense anymore.

At one point, George had felt someone lay down beside him; a flowery scent tickled at his nose and, as small hands clutched his arm, he realised he wasn't the only one feeling alone. Ginny lay her head on his shoulder as they both lay on the cold floorboards for what seemed like days, but was merely hours. Neither spoke, they simply stared at the moving photographs stuck to the walls, some half obscured by boxes, until the door opened and she leapt up to link hands with the dark haired figure in the doorway, and they made their way to the kitchen for dinner.

George stayed.

He had been watching one photo for hours now. A photo from the Quidditch World Cup; two red headed boys, identical, laughed in the photo, occasionally nudging or punching each other playfully.

What he would give to be living in that photo. To be trapped in that one moment in time. To be trapped there with him.

The next morning, much to everyone's surprise, George joined them for breakfast, though did little more than push the food around his plate. People spoke to him, patted him on the back, ruffled his hair; he was sure that Hermione had hugged him with one arm at the table, but she soon fell into conversation with his younger brother, and her reassuring arm fell from George's shoulders to entwine with Ron's.

After breakfast, he took place in the living room, where he remained. In and out the people went, their condolances washing over him; empty remarks. The day Angelina appeared beside him, her eyes staring at the same thing he had been watching, he barely acknowledged her. Her attempts at making conversation were futile, her jokes stale, and she was ushered away by an apologetic Molly who excused George's state as shock.

And yet, two days later, there he sat, still and empty as the room around him. He had become a part of the furniture, just another thing that people stepped around. It was an unspoken belief that if anyone could overcome a part of them missing both mentally and physically, it would be a Weasley. They had given up trying to move him, paying more attention to him as a single person now than he had received in his entire life. Ironic, he felt, that after the death, all the family could do was fuss over the twin that remained.

And yet none had noticed.

None had looked where he looked.

None saw what had hypnotised him.

From where he sat on the floor, slumped against the wall in the living room, all George Weasley could hear was the furious scrubbing of pots and pans from the kitchen. His eyes stared straight ahead, transfixed on the Weasley Family clock on the wall. For days, he had been watching one of the hands. All of the hands had remained still, pointing towards "Home". All but one. One moved, endlessly, from point to point, slowly spinning, never stopping. George followed it with his eyes for seconds, minutes, hours, days.

And then, exactly a week after the family's loss, it stopped.

The hand stopped on a particular point and, slowly, another hand moved to join it.

The clock chimed as a pained smile twitched at the edges of George's mouth, his eyelids finally giving in and fluttering closed, bringing on the sleep he had been depriving himself of ever since he first spied the restless clock hand.

As the clock chimed its last and the two hands clicked together as though they were one, an inseparable pair, pointing at the same destination, Molly entered the room to see which member of the family was on the move. Her eyes fell on the faces of the boys on the two hands, gazing at each other and laughing together as though they would never stop. Biting her lower lip, she felt tears prickling at her eyes as she read the names and their destination, realising that these two clock hands would never move again.

Fred Weasley and George Weasley. Destination: Lost.


End file.
